Multi-Channel Content Strategy for a Small Business

Many small businesses today have a hard time competing for attention online, and it’s not surprising – it takes a ton of resources to create a high-quality piece of content. Data shows that 47% of small business owners are solely responsible for their business’s marketing. Most of them simply do not have time to create content daily and post it across different platforms. 

Creating an effective Multi-channel Content Strategy for inbound marketing that focuses on content repurposing is, therefore, essential for small businesses looking to generate inbound leads. 

But first, let’s clarify the distinction between “marketing strategy” vs. “content strategy.”

What’s the Difference Between Marketing Strategy vs. Content Strategy? 

A marketing strategy is an overarching plan that helps a business reach and convert potential customers. A business’s marketing strategy usually includes both outbound and inbound marketing tactics. 

Some examples of outbound strategies are cold calling or cold emailing, PPC ads, TV commercials, or boosted social media posts. It’s when you actively reach people who may be interested in doing business with you. The inbound marketing, on the other hand, is when leads come to you. Inbound marketing tactics, among others, include content marketing. 

What is a content strategy, then? It’s a plan for executing content marketing initiatives for business growth. When creating a content strategy for inbound marketing, the goal is to attract leads by providing helpful and relevant search-engine-optimized content, such as blog posts, articles, videos, podcasts, and so on. 

Key Principles of Content Strategy 

Before we dive into the steps for creating a multi-channel inbound marketing content strategy, it’s important to understand the basic content strategy principles. Let’s narrow them down to the following: Audience, Journey, Content, and Business Goals. If you only take away these basic content marketing principles, you’re already ahead of most entrepreneurs out there. 

#1. Audience: Who Do You Serve? 

One of the biggest gaps small businesses have is a clear understanding of their target market or Ideal Customer. 

Solopreneurs or startups are often strapped for cash, taking on any work that comes their way. So, when the time comes to identify who they serve, they look at the mix of their clients and wonder, “What do these people have in common?” 

One good place to start is what attracted your clients to your brand in the first place: the problem that you solve for them. Identify your most successful clients (your Ideal Customers) and interview them to find out what their challenges, dreams, and aspirations are. 

By identifying who your Ideal Customer is, what type of content they like to consume, and what platforms they use, you can be sure to attract the right people with your content. 

#2. Journey: What Steps Do They Take Before They Buy? 

The next content strategy principle is understanding the buyer journey. It usually includes the Awareness, Consideration, Decision, and Retention stages. 

The journey includes hypothetical steps your buyer takes, from the time they realize they have a problem to making a purchase. The buyer journey also includes the internal process and struggles your potential customer goes through trying to figure out the best solution to alleviate his pain. 

Knowing how your potential customer progresses through different stages of their buyer journey helps to develop an inbound marketing content strategy that gently guides them along these stages. 

#3. Content: Why Do They Consume Content?

One of the most important principles of content strategy is offering your prospective clients the right piece of content at the right time with the right call to action in mind. 

This ensures that after landing on your website, your potential customer knows exactly what they need to do to solve their problem.

Many companies lose inbound leads simply because their potential customers can’t clearly identify what they should do after they land on the website. 

So make sure that every piece of content on your website includes a clear call to action, whether a form-fill to set up an appointment or a freebie to learn more. 

#4. Business Goal: What Are We Trying to Achieve? 

Last but not least, before you jump into creating your content strategy, you need to know what goal you are looking to achieve. Creating content by itself isn’t going to produce leads or sales for your business.

Every piece of content you create has to not only be helpful for your audience but actually produce a return on investment. This means that you have to know exactly how you’re going to make money from each piece of content you create. 

Now that you understand the basic principles of content strategy let’s dive into the creation of your multi-channel inbound marketing content strategy. 

Use the following content strategy roadmap in a way that fits you and your business. 

How to Create Multi-Channel Content Strategy for Inbound Marketing?

Step #1. Develop Your Content Mission Statement

When I first came across the term “content mission statement” in Joe Pulizzi’s book “Epic Content Marketing,” I thought to myself, “Why would I need a content mission statement? I already have a brand mission statement. Aren’t they the same?”

Here’s the difference. A brand mission statement answers the following questions: 

• WHOM do you help? 
• WHAT do you help them do? 
• HOW do you help them do it? 

A content mission statement answers the question: WHY do you create content? 

So, for example, if your brand mission is to help busy executives lose weight by working out in under 30 minutes per day with your Power-Sweat BootCamp, then your content mission could be to make nutrition and weight loss top of mind for busy executives by offering daily bite-sized on-the-go pieces of content. 

Just getting clarity on the WHY behind your content already helps you answer the following: 

• Who will you target with your content?
• What general topic will you cover?
• How often will you post? 
• How long will be your content pieces?
• What types of content will you create? 

A content mission statement also ensures alignment with your team. If someone on your team has a question about whether or not they should develop a particular piece of content, they can always refer to the mission statement for guidance. 

Step #2. Map Out Your Buyer Journey

Do you remember the last time you bought something online? Say a pair of running shoes. Let me guess, you may have searched “Best running shoes” on Google and read a conveniently available article. You then clicked on one of the shoes you liked, and the link took you to the brand’s website. 

But you didn’t add that pair of shoes to your cart right away; you actually opened a new tab and went to Amazon to see if these shoes were better priced there. After a brief moment of disappointment, you went back to the brand’s website and discovered that there was an opt-in email form that offered a 15% off coupon. 

So, you entered your email, signed up for text notifications, and got your coupon. You added the item to the cart, entered your card info, and there you go – your pair of shoes is on the way. 

What a journey, right? Every time a buyer makes a purchase, they go through the steps of their buyer journey. 

During the awareness stage, they look up general terms, such as “best running shoes.” Then, during the consideration stage, they compare brands. Then, during the decision stage, they decide to make a purchase and become your customer. 

Remember that the journey isn’t linear, and your customers go through many cycles of these journeys, but determining what content they are searching for during each stage will help you identify the keywords you want to target and the questions you want to answer in your content. 

Step #3. Conduct competitive analysis 

The next step when creating an inbound content strategy is to look at what your competitors are doing. 

Most likely, you know who they are, but in case you don’t, search general keywords related to your niche to see what websites are ranking for those keywords. Pick three competitors that are the closest to your offering. 

Now, it’s time to gather data about them and the content they create. If you have access to tools like SEMrush, you can run a Domain Analysis on each of your competitor’s websites to see what keywords they are ranking for, what articles get the most views, and how much traffic their website gets each month. 

You can then go to their blog section and analyze what topics they cover, what their content mission is, and whether or not they have any media, such as podcasts or videos. 

Then, go to the social media pages of your competitors, especially if they post on YouTube, and see what content gets the most engagement. 

If you have a particular strength, such as you can easily create video content, and you notice that your competitors aren’t creating video, note that down – that’s a great way to stand out. 

By analyzing your competition, you can take inspiration from what works for them, find keyword opportunities and ways to differentiate yourself. 

Step #4. Complete Existing Content Inventory

Chances are you already have some content on your website, whether it’s your homepage copy, press mentions, or even blog posts. When creating a multi-channel content strategy for inbound marketing, you don’t have to start from scratch. 

You can modify and optimize existing content for search if you haven’t done so yet. You can also repurpose blog content into infographics, podcasts, or video formats to enhance your chances of ranking in the video or image sections of Google search results. 

But before you can utilize content that you already have, you need to do an inventory of every piece of content you have, whether it’s a blog post, video, PDF, or infographic. 

This will also ensure that you won’t create duplicate content when executing your inbound marketing content strategy. 

Step #5. Develop a multi-channel content strategy

Now that we’ve gathered valuable data about your customers, their journey, your competitors, and the existing content you have, it’s time to get started on creating your multi-channel content strategy.

Now, what platforms should you use to post your multi-channel content? 

I like to divide content distribution channels into owned, not owned, searchable, and not searchable. 

Your website and blog are owned and searchable channels. Email marketing and podcasts are owned but not searchable. 

Platforms, such as YouTube, LinkedIn articles, TikTok, Pinterest, Quora, and Reddit, are searchable but not owned. Lastly, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn posts, Snapchat, and Twitter (X) are examples of not owned and not searchable channels. 

When creating an inbound content strategy, the key is to focus on searchable channels. This way, your inbound leads can find you when looking for solutions to their problems. 

Unlike social media, where your posts disappear into the void after a day or two, searchable channels have the potential to bring you customers indefinitely as long as the content is valuable and relevant to them. What's more, people go to searchable platforms to look for answers to their questions.

People go to Pinterest to look for inspiration when planning a wedding, figuring out how to remodel the house, or where to travel next year. 

They go to YouTube to learn how to change the lightbulb, for a good workout, or a recipe on how to make a cake. Some people actually use TikTok in the same manner. 

Searchable platforms are places where people go when they have problems to solve, not just to pass the time (like on Instagram, for example).

Once you identify the channels you want to target for your multi-channel content strategy, you need to figure out your content system for creating multi-channel content. At the end of the day, it’s very costly to create every single piece of content from scratch. Instead, I recommend content repurposing. 

Step #6. Create Your Multi-Channel Content System 

Depending on the time and resources you have available, your multi-channel content system will look different. 

For small business owners who are solely responsible for marketing their business, something like my Supercharged Content System course could be the answer. It teaches you how to batch content creation tasks to create 48 pieces of content in just 12 hours per month by streamlining your content creation. 

On the other hand, if you’re looking to create more content or if you want to hire a team, your content system may look different. 

To start, identify people responsible for different stages of content creation, such as: 

• Research
• Scripting
• Producing
• Acting (or simply showing up on camera as a Subject Matter Expert)
• Filming 
• Editing 
• Repurposing 
• Graphics 
• Scheduling and Publishing 

Here’s what it could look like in practice: 

• Research (VA)
• Scripting & Producing (Producer)
• Acting (Co-Founder of the company)
• Filming (Camera operator)
• Editing (Video Editor)
• Repurposing (Marketing Assistant)
• Graphics (Marketing Assistant)
• Scheduling and Publishing (VA)

Some of these roles can be contract or freelance positions. 

Once you identify who is going to be responsible for different parts of creating your multi-channel content, it’s time to identify the most efficient way to create all of this content using the resources you have. 

Here’s an example of a Content Creation Workflow:

Start by identifying the foundational long-form pieces you can create, such as blog posts/articles, videos and podcasts, and even a newsletter. You can then repurpose these foundational pieces into social posts. 

After you have your Content Creation Workflow mapped out, you can start putting together your multi-channel content calendar. 

Step #7. Develop a Multi-Channel Content Calendar

Your multi-channel content calendar can be as simple as a spreadsheet that includes graphs such as Status, Recording Date, Publishing Date, Script Writer/Writer, SME/Presenter, Editor, Reviewer, Type of Content, Blog/Video Title, Keywords, Notes, and so on. 

You can also use software such as Asana or Notion to keep track of all of the moving pieces. 

Step #8. Make a Repurposing Plan 

Lastly, after your foundational long-form pieces of content have been created, you need to repurpose them into social posts, such as short-form clips and social posts. 

To do so, you can assign a person on your team to take each blog post and turn it into text-based posts. Then, take long-form videos and turn them into clips with tools such as Descript or Vidyo. You can also create audiograms from the podcast content. 

Conclusion 

To create a multi-channel content strategy for inbound marketing, focus on searchable channels and create content that guides your customers through their buyer journey. Make sure you not only have a strategy but also a multi-channel content system that allows you to execute your plan.